


How to Become a God

by booklovertwilight



Category: Death Note & Related Fandoms, Death Note (Anime & Manga)
Genre: (although it starts with L), Accidental Immortality, Alternate Universe - Age Changes, Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Best Friends, Canon-Typical God Complex, Canon-typical serial killing, Childhood Friends, Doing science to magical artifacts, Established Relationship, Fluff and Humor, Friends to Lovers, Inappropriate use of conlangs, L has a name besides L, M/M, Morals? What Morals?, Morse Code, What if L and Light grew up together?, What would happen if L was there when Light found the Death Note?, dark academia aesthetic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-28
Updated: 2021-01-15
Packaged: 2021-03-10 17:33:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 10,346
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28390953
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/booklovertwilight/pseuds/booklovertwilight
Summary: Light picked up the notebook, reading the English words on the cover. "Death Note," he mumbled, confused, "As in, a notebook of death?"He flipped through it, skimming the (remarkably intricate) rules on the inner cover before he closed the strange notebook with a shrug. He was about to set it back onto the grass where he'd found it, and chalk it up to some odd prank. But he paused, and ended up taking out his phone instead, tapping the first (and only) number on his favorites list."Ryuzaki," he said, "I just found something interesting at school. I’m heading to the office now, meet me there and I’ll tell you about it."
Relationships: L/Yagami Light
Comments: 13
Kudos: 102





	1. Consider the Possibility

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The boys are kissing bright,  
> they are the brilliant ones who speak and write  
> with silver luck.
> 
> And if the timing is right,  
> to sneak off into the night,  
> I'll let myself be taken, just for the thrill.
> 
> \- The Hush Sound: "The Boys are Too Refined"

If Light sat still long enough, he could watch the shadows of the fluted ornamental stone columns on the building across from him move in their stable arc, from sunrise to sunset. 

Of course, that wasn’t  _ technically  _ accurate, and in the two and a half hours he sat in his lambda calculus lecture, the shadows hardly changed position at all. But staring out the window to which his chosen desk was closest, staring at the shadows, was a way to keep focused. And, it had the added benefit of letting him avoid the eyes of all the young men and women who wanted to either screw him, or be him. Or both. There had initially been a third group besides those two, but after two years spent dutifully finessing the Oxford University milieu, there wasn’t a single person who would say they hated Light Yagami.

The professor’s interrogative “Any questions before we move on?” pulled Light’s eyes briefly to the chalkboard, where he was both disappointed and unsurprised to find nothing of interest. He shook his head slightly, and looked back outside.

Something dropped out of the sky.

A thin black notebook, with white lettering on its front cover, fell down past the window. Light’s eyes tracked its descent, almost graceful due to the lightness of the paper, as it rotated once, twice in the air, then landed on its spine, tipping to one side and flipping softly shut on the grass of the quad. 

Light stared down at the book, eyes wide with confusion. It shouldn’t be too unusual for a notebook to fall past a window on a college campus: someone on an upper floor of the building could have dropped it. But the angle was all wrong. It had fallen too far away from the window to have been dropped from above, but the trajectory wasn’t the arc he would have expected if it were thrown. The book had fallen perfectly straight down to the ground, as though it’d been dropped from a helicopter. 

And it wasn’t just that. No-one was coming to retrieve it. Light would figure that if someone had dropped or thrown a notebook out a window, the owner would be coming out of the building to get it back. But as Light stared at it, not a single person was coming near it. Not the owner, and not any passers-by, either. The book had landed somewhere out of most peoples’ walking path, in the shadow of the building, so despite the unusual brightness of this December morning and the lack of England’s usual cloud cover, nobody on the quad seemed to notice it, either.

When Light left class a half-hour later, shrugging on his lightweight beige overcoat and walking out aimlessly toward the student housing - lambda calculus was his only lecture for today - the notebook was still sitting there.

Figuring he might as well be a good samaritan and return the book to whomever it belonged, Light made his way to it. 

He lifted the thin black notebook, turning it over. His brows furrowed. The lettering on the front cover was not a name or any form of identification, but instead, two words in an odd scrawl. “ _ Death Note _ ,” he murmured the words aloud. “As in… a notebook of death?” What did that even mean?

Light flipped the book open; there was more text in the strange, slightly alien white lettering on the inside cover. "How to use it..." he read the heading, and skimmed the (remarkably intricate) rules. Heading up the list was:

_ The human whose name is written in this notebook shall die. _

So that was its alleged purpose. Obviously, a notebook couldn’t  _ actually  _ do that - cause any type of death the writer specified (within 40 seconds), with the default being a heart attack, anywhere in the world, so long as the writer knew the target’s name and face. But whoever made this had gone to a lot of trouble to make it look like a legitimate magical artifact. While it looked like a typical college student’s notebook at first glance, a closer inspection revealed subtle wearing in certain places, like it had seen many decades of handling. The usual patterns of wear that would occur by human hands were much too large, or completely wrong; as though the notebook’s previous owner had been not-human.

What kind of person would drop something like  _ this  _ onto a university campus? Maybe they planned to do some type of social experiment, to see what kind of people the students at Oxford would kill, if they had the opportunity. Or maybe this book was a prop, made by some theatre student for a movie. It could even be one of those fake magic books, like the ones people who called themselves ‘wiccan’ carted around, although this was a bit too normal-looking. Usually people who pretended to be witches embraced the aesthetic a little more.

Flipping through the lined pages, he noticed all of them were blank. There was no contact information to get ahold of whoever the book might belong to. The only thing on the back inside cover were a few more rules.

Light closed the strange notebook again with a shrug, about to set it back onto the grass where he'd found it, and chalk it up to some odd prank. But he paused, and ended up taking out his phone instead, tapping the first (and only) number on his favorites list.

"Ryuzaki," he said, and continued without waiting for a reply, "I found something interesting at school today. I’m heading to the office now, meet me there and I’ll tell you about it."

* * *

_ Nine months ago: March 3rd, 2019.  _

The buzzing of his phone was the first thing Light registered as he blinked his bleary eyes open. He looked out his bedroom window: still dark outside. What time was it? He checked his phone, and realized someone was calling him. Not just someone. The name on the phone read  _ Ryuzaki _ .

Light pressed the green circle and scooted the phone closer. He whispered, “What?”

“Light, I have something important to tell you. It’s about our project.”

He shot up in bed, picking up the phone and pressing it to his ear. If there was something important enough to call about at three in the morning, he definitely wanted to hear about it in person. From his parents’ house to their office was a fifteen-minute journey, but he would need another ten to get dressed, so: “Meet you at the office in half an hour.”

“Perfect. I will see you there.”


	2. Realize Everything You Know is False

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I can't help but think of you:  
> in these four walls my thoughts seem to wander  
> to some distant century,  
> when everyone we know is six feet under.  
> When all of our friends are dead and just a memory,  
> and we're side by side, it's always been just you and me  
> for all to see...
> 
> I'll hold in these hands all that remains.
> 
> \- Bastille: "Skulls"

A short train ride away from the Oxford campus, there was a quaint five-story building with a coffee shop on the first floor. Light picked up two black teas and two cake pops, and took the elevator up to the fourth level. Down the hall and to the right, in a visually unremarkable office space with opaque curtains on the insides of all the windows and a truly paranoid amount of security on the door lock (not that the entire building hadn’t been modified to have extremely high security, but this was excessive even by Light’s standards), was “the office”.

Light stood at the door, unblinking (for the retinal scan), mostly unmoving (for the facial recognition), except for his arms, which maneuvered the drinks around to let him scan his thumbprint on a little plate above the metal door handle. Once every scan was complete, he pushed the handle down enough to unlatch it, and shoved the door open with his hip.

Already sitting close to the middle of the room, wearing his usual white button-up shirt and loose navy slacks, spinning slowly in a swivel chair and crouching on bare feet, was Light’s only real friend. He was his best friend, and his lover. This was the man Light had known for as close to forever as either of them cared to recall, the man who understood him in a world that couldn’t, the man who both drove him crazy and kept him sane.

The man with whom Light shared the moniker of L.

Light held up a cup and a cake pop. “Here, Leon, I brought you some sweets.” He laid a hand on the back of the chair to stop it spinning, and handed them over.

“Ten sugars?” Leon asked hopefully, owlish eyes staring up at Light above dark violet circles. He took a bite from the strawberry-vanilla cake pop and hummed in appreciation. “Mph good.”

“I gave you eight,” Light said, prying the lid off his own cup and taking a quiet sip. “Your insane metabolism might keep you from getting fat, but it won’t stave off diabetes.”

Leon shrugged, copacetic with this arrangement. He slurped his tea noisily. “So, Light, you said you had something to show me?”

Technically, he’d said he’d _found something interesting_ , but that could be inferred. Light hopped up onto the empty space on his desk, crossing his legs as he took a small bite from his cake pop. It was quite good, chocolate and raspberry. “I did,” he said, pulling around his messenger bag to fish out the strange black notebook. He held it up, letting Leon read the cover, then tossed it over to him. “What do you make of this?”

“ _Death Note._ Hm.” Leon caught it between the thumb and forefinger of one hand, holding it up to the neutral-colored overhead lights. “No visible fingerprints besides yours. Some scratches, like from claws. The cover is… well, it _feels_ like synthetic leather, but might be something else. The lettering was done with a wide-nibbed quill pen by someone with very large hands, or a strange way of holding writing implements.” He flipped the book open. “The lines printed onto the pages are the standard college rule, but missing margin guides. No contact names or other information besides these ‘rules’.”

Light nodded. He’d been curious what Leon would make of the book, since he was so good at poring over evidence, but nothing about that description led Light to doubt his previous conclusions. “My best guess is that it’s a prop for a movie,” he said. “I considered it might be a prank or a social experiment, but there’s no contact info or instructions.” He made to take another sip of his tea, but nearly spat it out. He forced himself to swallow before he yelled, “ _Leon!_ Bloody hell, what do you think you’re _doing_?!”

He removed his tongue from the book cover, looking quizzically at Light. “I thought you would want me to be thorough, since you were so anxious to tell me about this point of _interest_.” He smiled. “It tastes like sand.”

“I didn’t say you should-” he started to scold Leon, but paused. _Sand? Why does it taste like-_ “Did you say sand?”

“Yes. I am aware we’re nowhere near a beach. It also smells stiff and dusty. Like it’s been left in a cardboard box in an attic for twenty years.”

Light ate the rest of his cake pop in one bite, his plan to savor one of the few sweets he let himself have be damned, and leapt off the desk. He circled Leon’s swivel chair, leaning over his shoulder to stare at the notebook with him. This mystery was getting more interesting by the moment. _It tastes like sand, looks like it’s been raked through hell and back, and smells like it’s been left in an attic. Faking all those qualities would be way too much work for a theatre student to put in, for no good reason. So who made this, and why?_

“I have no better guesses than you do, Light,” Leon said, replying to Light’s unspoken question. This was a pretty common occurrence for them, predicting what each other are thinking well enough to complete the other’s thoughts. “I initially thought it was some kind of toy, but now I’m lacking _any_ hypotheses.”

Light chuckled, leaning back. “A _toy_ ? Oh, sure, like…” He affected his best _children’s TV commercial voiceover_ tone: “Bop it! Twist it! Commit homicide!”

Leon laughed hard enough to shake the chair he was crouching on. “Oi, shut up, Light.”

Reflexively: “Make me.” Light stood, crossing his arms. 

Leon reached back to grab Light’s waist and spin his chair around; as soon as they were facing each other, he grabbed Light’s shirt near the collar and yanked him down into a kiss. 

Even after they broke away, Light stayed close, smiling affectionately. “Idiot.”

“Bastard,” Leon replied, his tone just as sweet.

“I love you.”

“I love you too.”

Light finally stood straight after that, returning to get his tea with a pleased smile. “Well, without enough information to figure out who _made_ this, we could speculate on something else,” he offered, leaning back against his desk. “If the rules in that book were accurate, and you really could kill someone just by writing their name… who would it be? How would you use something like this?”

He tipped his head aside, messy mop of black hair flipping with it as he looked up at Light. “Hm… if we pretend this is a real weapon… the first thing coming to mind is a hostage situation, where officials can’t get a sniper lock on the target. This could resolve such a situation with a minimum of risk. Or… there are a great many criminals who the police would execute if they could, but who are too deep in hiding to touch. If all that’s needed is a face and a real name… _we_ know _that_ , Light. We could do the world a favor and take out every nation’s Most Wanted list with a few strokes of a pen.”

Light nodded. That was exactly what he’d been thinking. “Well, it’s not that hard to test it.”

Someone else might have balked at the idea. Of stooping to test something that had the most miniscule likelihood of working, or of killing someone. Honestly, everyone in Light’s classes at Oxford - the sorts of people who thought “science” was restricted only to the domain of classes whose names ended in “-ology”, instead of being a generalizable way to find out stuff about the universe - would probably be more upset about the former than the latter.

But Leon just nodded. He and Light weren’t anything like those stuffy academics locked in their ivory towers: both of them cared much more about results than methodologies. This was, of course, the same reason neither of them had any trouble with the idea of committing murder. Ordinary eighteen-year-olds probably would have, but neither of them were ordinary. “Let’s find five death-row inmates from five different countries and have them all die at specified times. If the first one dies on time, we’ll begin testing the other rules… have one write a note, perhaps.”

It was a good plan. It would provide enough evidence to be absolutely certain the book did what it purported to, and also prevent anyone from connecting the deaths to each other or to them. “Do you think that’s what ‘details of the death’ means? That this notebook is supposed to be able to control peoples’ actions before they die?” It was the same hunch Light had.

“It seems like the most likely possibility.” Leon climbed out of his chair onto the floor, where his computer was set up. (He had a desk, but it was covered in papers.) “For our five countries, let’s use… England, America, China, India, and Japan.” After a few moments of typing in passwords and searching databases, he had the names, and was kneeling on the ground with the notebook open under his pen. “Ready?”

“As I’ll ever be,” Light shrugged. Despite his outward nonchalance, his heartbeat was kicking up an anxious pace. He stared intently at the notebook, watching the point of Leon’s pen as he wrote the first name, then turning his wrist to stare at the second hand of his watch.

After precisely forty seconds, Leon yelped aloud in surprise, leaping to his feet and backing away until he slammed into his desk.

“Leon! What’s wrong?” Light turned toward him, halfway to standing. But Leon relaxed a moment after, releasing the white-knuckled grip on his pen.

“There was a strange feeling,” he said, sounding more excited than scared, “a short delay after writing the name. It was… a small jolt, or a rush… not altogether unpleasant.” He walked back over and pressed the pen into Light’s hand. “You should try it. Let’s see if it’s replicable.”

“Okay, but first, check if that man-” he pointed at the name L had scrawled into the top corner of the blank page, “-is dead.”

“Oh, of course.” He knelt in front of his monitor, clicking around, before he froze. His eyes pulled open wide, staring at the screen. “Light…” he said distantly as his breathing quickened, “It _happened_ . I would never have expected it to actually _work_ , but he… he had a heart attack. Exactly forty seconds after I wrote his name.”

Light looked over, looking at the prison’s bare-bones report, and back at the page. The same name, written at the top of each. “Leon…” _It could be a coincidence. I have to try making someone write a note, like Leon suggested._ “Get me another name.”

He nodded mutely and did so, not taking his eyes off the screen until Light was halfway finished with writing. 

Light wrote the name right beside the previous one, and then added that the man should write out a specific message before he died. Just as Light was finishing his writing, a warm crackling electricity ran through his chest, dissipating a moment after. It wasn’t like any feeling he had ever experienced before, but as Leon had said… it wasn’t unpleasant. Slightly breathless, and strangely invigorated, he said, “It happened to me, too.”

“Interesting,” Leon said, eyes glued to his screen as he waited for a report to come up. “I wonder if that’s how the book lets you know it worked.”

Light was hardly paying attention to the strange sensation they’d both experienced, under the weight of the fact that _forty seconds after Leon had written a name in a notebook that said it could kill, that man had died._ The moment he saw movement on Leon’s screen, he exclaimed, “There, look!”

“Inmate died of a sudden heart attack after writing the following…” Light read the report, and the attached photograph of the note. He read it, and looked back at his own handwriting on the page, containing the exact same words. “The death note… it’s for real!”

Leon was grinning now, staring down at the notebook like it was the most interesting puzzle he’d ever seen. Well, it probably was. “You do understand what this means, don’t you Light.” He looked up at Light, a maniacal glint in his eyes. “Everything we thought we knew is false.”

Light blinked at him. He’d been thinking this whole time of things to _do_ with this book, and the ambition of his thoughts had only been exacerbated by finding out the bloody thing _worked_. Ideas of demolishing the current world order and erecting a superior one in its place were swirling through his mind. But it seemed Leon was thinking down a different train entirely. It happened, sometimes. “Huh?”

“We just caused two heart attacks on the opposite side of the world by writing on magic paper. There isn’t any reason, within the laws of physics as we know them, that that should be possible. For _centuries_ , science has been operating under the delusion that we can find out everything there is to know about the universe just by looking at natural phenomena, but _clearly_ , that’s false! This book breaks _everything_ , Light!”

And now Light understood that look. He sighed, running his fingers across his forehead. “You want to do science to the magic book, don’t you.”

Leon frowned, tilting his head aside. “Don’t you?”

Light chuckled, giving Leon a smirk. “Of course I do. But what’s the end goal of science? It isn’t just knowledge. It’s _progress_.”

With a similarly amused look, Leon stared back. “You want to change the world with the magic book, don’t you.”

“Don’t you?” Light echoed.

“Of course.”

* * *

_One year ago: November 22, 2018._

Light closed his umbrella, and set it, still-dripping, into the holder by the door as he walked into the cafe. His expression and breathing were even, excessively so from the control he was forcing to cover up the racing of his heart. Leon had texted him today while he was in the middle of class, and explicitly said he wanted to meet Light somewhere _besides_ their office, to talk about something _outside_ of work. 

The cafe was a little out of his way, but it was a nice place. Quaint, even. Soft yellow lighting cascaded over delicate desserts in polished glass cases, mahogany-accented booths and wide-leafed potted ferns. Light hadn’t been here in a long time. Actually, the last time he’d been here was… 

He shook his head, not keen on reminiscing, and made his way towards the center of the cafe, from which he could see Leon tucked away in the furthest booth from the entrance. He bought two strawberry parfaits from the counter, and made his way over.

“Ryuzaki,” he said, sliding the parfait across the table, then setting a spoon down beside it. “You wanted to talk to me?”

“Asahi,” Leon used his alias, too, as he always did outside of school or work. “Yes, I did.” He picked up his spoon, lifting out a small bite of parfait. “Thank you for buying me food.”

“It was my pleasure,” Light said, brain running on automatic as he tried to hyperventilate quietly enough that Leon wouldn’t notice. “What did you want to talk about? You said it wasn’t about any of our projects.”

“Yes, well…” he stared at his spoon for a long moment before setting it gently down on the table with a soft clank. “I have a bit of a… problem. I wanted to ask for your advice in solving it.”

A problem… unrelated to their detective work as L. Was Leon reconsidering his decision to not go to college? As Light met his eyes, he knew that couldn’t be it. Leon looked so… nervous. He was shifting uncomfortably in his crouch, like he was trying to get out from under Light’s inquisitive gaze. 

Light kept his voice carefully calm as he asked, “What kind of problem?”

Leon frowned, reaching back to scratch at his scalp as he looked off to the corner of their table. “I am currently suspended in a superposition.”

Light blinked at him. _A superposition… like Schrodinger's Cat, both alive and dead at the same time until someone opens the box._

“If I tell you what two states I’m caught between, the superposition will collapse.” He glanced back at Light, eyes apologetic. “I’m not _trying_ to frustrate you, I’m sorry. I’m just…” He shook his head, and took another quick bite of his parfait. The unsaid word hung in the air: _afraid_.

“It’s okay,” Light said, and meant it more than he realized. Because he’d been in his own superposition. For some time, the usual banter between him and Leon had been… different. The words themselves hadn’t changed, but the competitive edge that saturated their exchanges had shifted into something new. Something _charged_. Like a jolt of electricity passed between them whenever Leon’s intense, unblinking gaze met his own, making Light’s chest clench a little bit each time. 

He had done precisely nothing about this feeling for months, and he’d been planning to continue doing nothing about it. He was a more than good enough actor to pretend nothing was going on. And he couldn’t jeopardize his friendship with the only person who genuinely understood him, no more than he could jeopardize the name they’d made for themselves as L. Light’s little crush had stayed unacknowledged for as many months, and both their seventeenth birthdays had passed without either of them the wiser.

But this conversation, this anxiety that Leon didn’t even seem to be trying to hide…

“You’re my best friend, Asahi,” Leon stated the obvious. “And I never want to lose you.”

“I know,” Light said. He picked up his spoon, finally, and lifted a spoonful of parfait to his lips. The nervousness was settling into his stomach and he really didn’t feel like eating, but this way he wouldn’t have to keep looking into Leon’s deep grey eyes. “But for what it’s worth, Ryuzaki… I don’t think there’s anything you could possibly do to make me stop being your friend.”

Even though he wasn’t looking, he could feel Leon staring at him anyway, with the slant of his eyelids asking, _Is there really? Could I do anything, anything at all to you, and you would accept it?_ And Light chuckled softly to himself then, because he knew his answer, though he also knew it was probably foolish. “Yeah, I… I remember being alone, even though it was ages ago. I don’t ever want to go back to living like that.”

“I remember it too,” Leon said, voice stronger for hearing Light’s words. “You know, the problem with collapsing a superposition lies when you don’t know the probability of each state.”

“True.” _But I think I can guess what those probabilities are now, Leon._ He scraped up a spoonful of slightly-melted pink-and-white, and held it in the air as he smiled at his friend. “I have a hypothesis, of what you called me here to ask. Would you like to hear it?”

Leon blinked once, and then again. “...Yes, I think I would.”

Light nodded. “Are you…” he started to ask, but trailed off. Leon’s curious, nervous expression blurred in front of him as he focused on his spoon. That wasn’t the right way to say this. He bit his lip, letting it slide slowly out from between his teeth as he lowered the spoon back to rest in his parfait cup. Saying it the right way was harder.

“Am I?”

“I am…” Light began again. That was better. Now he just had to finish. Four more words, only four more words. But they stuck in his throat, so sweet they tasted acidic, like the thirtieth candy Leon made him try because he was confident he could get Light to enjoy sweets as much as he did if only he showed him enough kinds. 

Leon didn’t echo him that time, just sat there, blurry, still, and staring. 

“I’m… in love with you,” and it didn’t seem right to use a pseudonym now, so as he looked up at him again he whispered, “Leon.”

He started laughing, softly, like he was keeping that laugh just for Light. “Got it in one,” he said, with a wicked smirk but adoring eyes. He pushed his parfait aside then, and climbed out of his crouch onto the table. Kneeling, face an inch from Light’s: “Was I really so obvious?”

And, breathlessly, just before he kissed him, Light said, “Yeah.”


	3. Experiment with the Supernatural

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Always a riddle in the world, she says,  
> always a riddle inside my head,  
> always a thing to wonder the way we come to be.  
> Oh, it's a big old place for me, yeah it's a big old world indeed.  
> Everyone is killing me and everything conspires.
> 
> Oh, in dreams I have watched it spin,  
> seen a violent crack of atoms where all light comes in.  
> Oh, in dreams I have lain in sin,  
> just to be the cracked and the cared for.
> 
> How can I ask, ask for more?
> 
> \- Ben Howard: “In Dreams”

Under the white lights of their office, both halves of the elusive detective L, two teenage boys in collared shirts and slacks, sat on polished wooden floorboards. They were hunched over a laptop computer and a magical notebook, and staring at each other with dangerous smirks on their faces.

“We ought to figure out the scope of the death note’s powers before we decide on the best way to use it,” Leon proposed, reaching over to take Light’s free hand.

Light nodded in reply, spinning the pen idly between his fingers. “What tests could you think of? I think we should test all the rules written in this thing, just to make sure they’re accurate, but on top of that.”

“Agreed. For additional tests,” Leon rubbed his thumb across Light’s absently, “let’s start with figuring out the limits of our control over peoples’ actions before they die. If we can make them kill others, for example, that’s a significant increase in the number of potential applications for this.” He lifted his half-empty cup of tea and took a long sip. 

“I also wonder what we’d find if we looked at the physical properties of the notebook. Could you burn it or dissolve it in acid? What if we looked at the paper under a microscope?” Light tapped the back-end of the pen against the notebook page. “Maybe we won’t glean anything interesting or useful, but it’s worth testing.”

Leon nodded once, perfunctorily, before he turned to Light with a steel gaze. “We’ll need to be very careful about killing too many criminals too suspiciously, too close together. It could attract unwanted attention.”

“I know,” Light said, squeezing Leon’s hand in acknowledgement. A lot of the plans which his mind was still weaving into place, even now, would  _ require _ bringing rather a lot of attention onto them - but still, he could recognize that Leon was right. It made no sense to start trying to fix the world with this notebook before they knew the full extent of what it was capable of. He could be patient.

* * *

Within four days, they’d confirmed all the rules written in the notebook itself: the name had to be written with the person’s face in mind, any plausible cause of death would happen so long as it was written within 40 seconds, and most sets of ‘details’ could be specified within 6 minutes and 40 seconds. In the process of testing these, they’d figured out some additional rules. 

First, the notebook (inconveniently) wouldn’t allow killing anyone whose name wasn’t written in it: if a specified death would affect other lives, the person would just die of a heart attack instead. However, if the names of everyone who was going to die in a certain situation were written in the note, it was possible for the death of one to cause the deaths of others.

Second, any ‘details’ needed to be within the reasonable limits of what a person might normally do. They couldn’t get someone to draw a picture of a face they’d never seen, or write down information they had no way of knowing. However, it moderately amused the both of them to learn they could still make people do things that were rather  _ out of character _ , such as confessing to crimes they’d previously been tight-lipped about, or donating all their money to charity despite a long history of miserliness.

Third, the cause and details of the death could be filled in before the name, even  _ days _ before. They had some ongoing experiments to see how  _ many _ days, but so far, up through four days seemed to still work perfectly well.

They’d consolidated their experiments to minimize the total number of deaths, so between the two of them over four days, their total kill count with the death note was just shy of two dozen. An insignificant blip on the radar of the world.

* * *

On the fifth day, in the middle of the night, they were in one of Oxford’s chemistry labs, carefully watching a beaker of muriatic acid that was sitting under a fume hood. Leon held a torn piece of the death note just above the liquid’s surface, gripped in long metal tongs. Both he and Light wore acid-resistant gloves as well as the usual safety goggles and white lab coats, and there was a large bucket of water and a bowl of baking soda nearby. 

It was almost anticlimactic when Leon dropped the scrap into the beaker and all it did was dissolve.

“So far,” Light summarized as he diluted, then neutralized, the acid, “the pages of the death note do mostly what we’d expect of ordinary paper. They tear under tension, crease under pressure, burn in fire, and dissolve in acid.” He pushed the beaker towards Leon, and pulled off his goggles and gloves. “The only difference is they’re waterproof.”

“A disappointing result, but not an unsurprising one,” Leon said as he took the beaker of grainy sludge and poured it into a hazardous waste container. “Would you still like to try-” 

A shaking clatter of Leon putting the empty beaker down with suddenly-trembling hands, followed by a dull thud as he backed into the opposite counter, caused Light to turn around. “What is-”

Then he saw it.

In the far corner of the room, out of direct view of the ceiling lights, was  _ something _ . Light would have called it a monster, if he thought in such terms: the creature was massive, with a mess of ink-black feathers protruding from behind bony, angular shoulderblades. Its gangly arms and legs were bent as it crouched to fit its seven-plus-foot-tall form under the laboratory ceiling, and it was clothed in patchwork leather with alien-looking metallic jewelry and chains. Its face was almost mask-like, plaster white with puffy blue lips that stretched into an inhumanly wide smile, showing off glimmering, shark-like teeth. 

Light clamped his hands over his mouth to keep from screaming, backing up as far as he could anyway, until his back hit the same counter as Leon. 

And just then, the creature’s bright yellow eyes briefly glowed red, and it opened its mouth. “Hi there!”

Light blinked, now more confused than anything else. He would have expected some kind of guttural growl to come from something that looked like  _ that, _ but the voice was oddly… normal? It sounded like it ought to come out of a cheeky young man from Birmingham, not this gothic demon. He lowered his hands from his mouth, and took a cautious step forward. “Uh… hi.”

“Who are you?” Leon added, still standing at the counter but no longer pressed against it as though glued there. 

“The name’s Ryuk,” the creature said, giving a little wave, then pointing to the death note sitting on a nearby countertop. “That used to be my notebook.”

The last of Light’s shock fled with the knowledge that his - and Leon’s - suspicions were correct. The death note  _ did _ have a previous owner, who  _ wasn’t _ human. “I see,” he said. “Well, Ryuk. We’ve been expecting you.”

“We, huh?” A long clawed finger came to point at Leon. “You’re including him, right? I was wondering why there was another guy writing in my death note.”

“Yes, he is including me.” Leon finally stepped away from the counter, slinking forward to stand beside Light. He peeled off his gloves and picked the goggles off his head, setting them all on the counter and looking up at Ryuk. “I’m Leon,” he said, because he clearly didn’t see any point in giving a pseudonym to a supernatural entity, “Light’s boyfriend. I have to ask…  _ what  _ are you?”

“I’m a shinigami,” he replied, nonchalant.

“A god of death…” Light whispered, impressed. “I should have known.”

“But I’m gonna ask you the same thing,  _ Leon _ ,” Ryuk continued. “What are  _ you _ ? It  _ has _ been a few thousand years since a death note came to the human world, but I don’t remember any previous users sharing its power with their  _ boyfriends _ .” The shinigami floated closer on unbeating wings, more gliding than flying. “Siblings, sometimes, or spouses, but humans go through lovers too quick.”

“Ah,” Leon said, wandering around a table, his light steps similar to Ryuk’s floating as he moved closer. “I understand. Suffice it to say that Light and I share a very strong bond, because we share our lives, even and especially the parts no-one else knows about.”

It was pure fact, but Light still smiled to hear Leon say it. Looking up at Ryuk, he nodded.

“It seems we each have a lot of questions for each other,” Light said, noticing the confused looks Ryuk was giving to the chemistry lab. “Shall we take turns?”

The shinigami nodded enthusiastically, hovering onto a countertop and sitting there cross-legged. 

When Leon leapt up onto the opposite counter, curling into a ball on the edge of its smooth black surface, Light strode over to stand at his side, across from their new supernatural friend. “Since you just asked Leon something, let me start. Ryuk, why exactly are you here?”

“I dropped the notebook. I’m supposed to haunt whoever picks it up, and that’s you, so here I am.” He turned his massive palms up. “Okay, my turn. What in the King’s name is this place? And what are you doing with my notebook in it?”

“That was  _ two  _ questions, Ryuk,” Light said, holding up two fingers for emphasis. It was remarkably easy to take a playful tone with this shinigami. “To answer your  _ first _ question, this is a laboratory. It’s a place to do science, which is sort of like human magic.”  _ Technically, that isn’t quite true - if anything, science is more powerful than magic. But it’s a fine comparison for a being who has probably never heard of science. _ “This particular place is for chemistry, which is about mixing things together to see what happens. There are a lot of tools here to measure those reactions, and to keep us safe while we create them.”

Ryuk’s grin widened with intrigue. “Heh, humans definitely didn’t have anything  _ this  _ interesting last time I was here.”

“Next question,” Leon said, “where do you come from?”

“The shinigami realm,” Ryuk said the name like it left a foul taste in his shark-toothed mouth. “It’s a desolate wasteland of a world, full of lazy bones. There used to be plants and animals and things, but now it’s all just desert, and a couple dozen shinigami lazing around gambling. I was so  _ bored _ I didn’t even feel alive. Heh, suppose it’s odd for a death god to say that, but you get my point. I dropped the notebook because I wanted to have some real fun for the first time in so many centuries.”

Light nodded to himself.  _ An immortal shinigami is here on earth because he was bored. I wonder if Leon is thinking the same thing I am about this.  _

“To answer your other question,” Leon said, “we wanted to know the physical properties of the notebook. Does it work the same way as ordinary paper, or is there something special about it? We found out so far that even though the pages aren’t laminated, they don’t get wet when submerged in water.”

“Heh, even I didn’t know that,” Ryuk sounded impressed. “Not a lot of water in the shinigami realm.”

_ Shinigami realm. Right. About that…  _ “Do you work the same way as shinigami in Japanese folklore? You kill humans to steal their unlived years?”

“Right,” Ryuk confirmed. “But before you ask, no, you two won’t get the unlived years from those twenty-three people you’ve killed with the notebook. That’s one of the two differences between you and me.”

Light chuckled, sharing a glance with Leon. “We look the ambitious sort, don’t we? Well, I won’t lie, it  _ is  _ disappointing that this notebook won’t make us immortal.”  _ I think there might be another way to do it, though, if a more roundabout one. _

“What’s the other difference between us, Ryuk?” Leon asked. “You mentioned there were two.”

“Now who’s asking two questions!” Ryuk cackled. 

“Ah, sorry, I’m getting ahead of myself. Ask us something else, then.” 

“Nah, I’ll answer this. Was gonna tell you anyway. The second difference between humans who own death notes, and shinigami, is our eyes.” His eyes flashed briefly for emphasis. “A shinigami’s eyes can see the names and lifespans of humans above their heads. That way, we never worry about being unable to kill someone just because we don’t know their name. And, when we do kill that person, we always know exactly how many years we’re going to get. I can see both your lifespans above your heads right now… although of course, there’s no way I’d tell you what they are.” 

_ He’s refusing to tell us how many years we have left… because he’s being deliberately obstinate? More likely that he simply can’t. With the number of rules surrounding the death note, it would make sense that the shinigami themselves have rules they have to operate by, too. _ Light nodded. “I see…” He took Leon’s hand now and held it against the counter, pressing his index finger into his lover’s palm in the staccato rhythm of hyper-quick Morse code. ‘I bet shinigami have a whole ruleset they have to abide by.’

‘Probably imposed by the king Ryuk mentioned before,’ Leon replied the same way.

“Alright,” Ryuk piped up cheerfully, none-the-wiser, “my next question for you two: have you found out any rules besides the ones I already wrote in the book?”

“Yes, actually, several,” Leon said with the same proud tone he used to deliver a critical insight into a case. “As long as the words are recognizable, the notebook can be written on with anything. But, names have to be written in their original language: writing a Chinese person’s name using Roman characters won’t work, even if it’s an accurate transliteration. That said, things like stroke order don’t seem to matter, nor does the legibility of one’s handwriting.”

Light picked up right where Leon had left off: “While the notebook can’t affect any lives besides the ones written in it, you  _ can _ create a situation where one person whose name is written physically causes the death of another person whose name is  _ also _ written. Say, write that one person dies after shooting someone, and that the second person dies from being shot.”

Ryuk had started cackling by now, but Leon kept talking. “Erasing what’s written in the death note doesn’t have any effect, nor does white-out, or scribbling the words out, or writing nonsense letters on top to make the text illegible... but for some reason, if you cross out text with exactly two horizontal lines - no more, no less - it works.”

“The details of the death can be written up to  _ days _ before the name itself is added - though how  _ many  _ days, we’re not sure yet.” Light flashed a grin at the laughing shinigami. “Give us a break on that one, we’ve only had the bloody thing four days.”

“It makes no difference what language is used to write the cause and conditions of the death. Living languages like Spanish, dead languages like Latin, and constructed languages like Klingon all work. But, the user does need to actually know the language: transcribing text in a language you don’t personally know won’t work. In short, the death note borrows the linguistic knowledge of its user.”

“Finally, a torn scrap contains all the same properties as a page still attached to the book. In short, there’s nothing special about being attached to the cover: it’s something about the paper itself which creates the effect.”

Between wheezes of laughter and loud smacks of giant clawed hands against gangly knees, Ryuk exclaimed, “You two are  _ loony, _ you know that?”

“Thank you very much!” Leon nodded as though the Queen had just complimented his dress shirt. 

“What are you even going to  _ do _ with the notebook?” Ryuk was just staring at the two intently, an enthusiastic grin splitting his inhuman face. “I’ve had a death note as long as there’ve been humans on this planet, and I didn’t know  _ any _ of that. What are you planning so you need to know this stuff?”

“Oh, we’re not really sure about that yet, actually,” Light said.  _ He thinks we need a reason. Are all shinigami such incredibly uncurious creatures? They have failed to learn in twelve thousand years what Leon and I did in four days... but maybe that has more to do with the fact that they’ve never considered the idea of science. To be fair to Ryuk, I don’t think I would independently come up with the experimental method of my own accord, either. It wasn’t any one human that came up with it, it was thousands of humans over hundreds of years, each of us building on what we grew up with. That sort of thing couldn’t happen among a group of immortal beings. Does immortality necessarily breed that kind of stagnation? _

Suddenly, there came a loud metallic creak as the laboratory door swung open. Leon turned to look over his shoulder, even as Light stayed frozen in place.

“Ah, hello! I was wondering why the lights were on in here,” said the warm, easygoing voice of the head of the astronomy department. She slid the sleeves of her loose brown turtleneck up to her elbows as she made her way toward them. “Light, who’s this?”

‘She can’t see Ryuk,’ Leon tapped into Light’s palm.

Relieved, Light tapped back ‘good’, then turned to the professor. “Ah, I don’t think you two have met. Professor, this is my boyfriend, Ryuzaki.” He gave her a warm smile, gesturing to Leon, and very carefully avoiding any glance toward the gigantic feathered reaper sitting on the counter at his other side.

Leon climbed down to take the professor’s outstretched hand, shaking it once gently before stepping back again, surreptitiously wiping his hand off on his slacks. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

“Ryuzaki, this is Professor Cairns,” Light completed the introduction, “she heads up the astronomy department here at Oxford.”

“The pleasure is mine.” She nodded at Leon, then looked to Light, raising a playful eyebrow. “Light, do I want to know what you’re doing with your boyfriend in the chemistry lab at one in the morning?”

“Professor…” Light groaned. “It isn’t like that. We were having dinner when I remembered I had an experiment due for my analytical chemistry class tomorrow morning. I’d completely forgotten about it.”

“And I insisted on tagging along, since we weren’t going to get to finish our date anyway,” Leon added mildly.

“I see,” the professor’s straw-blonde bob swung over her shoulders as she nodded. It wasn’t clear whether or not she bought their lie, but in the end it didn’t matter: it wasn’t the  _ professors  _ at this school who started rumors, and regardless, she would never come up with the  _ truth _ . “Well, I’ll leave the lights on, then. Try to finish your experiment soon, Light, and get some sleep.” She spun on one heel, and her steps clicked back across the floor. “Don’t keep your boyfriend out too late either.”

“I’ll do my best, Professor,” Light gave a flourishing wave as she walked out the door. After he’d heard her steps clicking down the hallway and out of earshot, he turned back to Ryuk. “Ok, spill. Why couldn’t she see you?”

The shinigami cackled. “Only people who’ve touched my death note can see me, or hear my voice. Right now, that’s just the two of you.”

Leon’s gaze snapped over to the death note, which was currently sitting face-down on the counter beside him. Less than a meter away from where Professor Cairns had just been standing. “We are going to be  _ much _ more careful about where we leave that thing from now on, if anyone who touches it can see you.”

Light nodded emphatically. He didn’t want to think about what might happen if even one other person besides Leon was able to see Ryuk following him everywhere. He and Leon were practiced liars, but trying to explain why there was a blatantly supernatural entity following them around… where would they even start?

“But speaking of not staying out too late,” Leon said, “I do know you need to sleep, Light. Let’s look at that paper under a microscope, and then go home.”

* * *

_ Two years ago: September 17, 2017. _

“Is this seat taken?”

Light looked up. His best friend was already sliding into the chair beside him. “For the fact that you don’t even go here, you’re sure on campus a lot.”

Leon shrugged, gesturing around the room. On either side of the table at which they sat, fluted arches framed shelves of hardback books. Further up, a railed-in second story of similar bookshelves could be accessed by spiral staircases at the ends of the room; arching over all of that, a tall ceiling framed by an oil-painted frieze. “I can get most of the fun out of college just by sitting in the library with you.” 

“Fair point,” Light ceded, skimming his fingers over the text open in front of him. But the history of computer systems had only barely held his attention  _ before _ Leon had shown up, and now he had something more important on his mind. “Any progress with our project? Has the predictive analysis finished yet?”

Leon shook his head. “It’s still running on the supercomputer, but I have notifications set up.” He lifted his phone as emphasis, then tapped the rest into Light’s open palm: ‘We should have an answer within the hour, at which point we can tell the police where the robbers will hit next.’

Light nodded, closing his eyes and giving Leon’s hand a brief squeeze. He’d hoped they would be able to solve this case before anyone  _ else  _ got hurt, and it looked like that was going to happen. The relief was bittersweet, but still there.

“Good work on that code, by the way.”

Light looked back up to see Leon was smiling, grey eyes glittering with sympathy. His friend knew better than anyone that murder cases hit him harder than most. “Thanks,” he replied. “You know I couldn’t have done it without you.”

“Doubtful.” A quiet giggle. “You could have replaced me with a rubber duck.” 

“A rubber duck wouldn’t have ribbed me for ten minutes over missing a semicolon.” Light’s grin widened as he lifted an eyebrow.

Leon lifted both of his in reply. “Oh, so that’s a feature, not a bug?” 

Light laughed easily now. “Definitely.”


	4. Construct Secret Codes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So run for the gold,   
> run for the money,  
> run for the infinity;  
> we'll never return and be free.  
> But every time that I come around,  
> there's too many little things they know about us.
> 
> \- Oscar and the Wolf: "Princes"

Freezing wind whipped through loose hair as two young men stood on the edge of the university quad, each holding their phone in one hand and their lover’s hand in the other. Leon was hailing them a lift to take them back to their respective homes, since the buses and trains weren’t running at half past 1 am, and Light was opening his contacts list.

He tapped ‘B’, and immediately found the man he was looking for. Light had shared a computational linguistics class with him last year, and from that Light knew that although his real first name was Robert, and his parents called him Bobby, everyone at school called him “Beyond Birthday”.

Light didn’t know all that much about Beyond - particularly, he had no clue where he’d acquired such a strange nickname - but he did know three crucial things. First, Beyond got about as little sleep as Leon did. Second, the man was nearly as smart as Light, and was thus breezing through college nearly as easily. (Perhaps more so, in fact: after all, he wasn’t simultaneously juggling being the world’s greatest detective.) And third, Beyond was incredibly interested in anything and everything to do with languages.

Squinting against a particularly strong gust of winter wind, Light tapped out two messages in quick succession:

“Hey Beyond, you up?   
Got a conlang idea for you.”

Beyond’s reply was almost immediate: “ya?”

Light allowed his lips to form a self-satisfied smile. His assumption that such an idea would be irresistible to the bored linguistic genius was completely correct.   
“Can you make something that would work if:   
1: nobody except the person you’re talking to can know you’re speaking any language, and   
2: you can’t look at or touch your conversation partner to speak to them.”

“sounds like a fun challenge”   
There was a short pause before the typing bubble came up again.   
“how about a language based on singing or whistling?”

Light lifted one eyebrow as he peered at his screen. “I’m listening.”

“ok some guy made a musical language called solresol in the 1800s   
which would work for that purpose perfectly   
but it like   
sucked?   
as in it doesn’t sound nice or anything”

“Can you make one that sounds nice?”

“and also it’s sexist   
yeah that’s what I was thinking”

Light was  _ not _ going anywhere near the can of worms that he’d open by asking how a constructed language could be  _ sexist _ , so he just wrote: “Would you mind teaching it to me whenever you’re finished?”

“ofc! I’ll make you a textbook”

“Thanks, Beyond.”

Light shut off his phone and slid it back into his pocket, balling his hand into a tight fist to try to warm his fingers. He was quite satisfied with how that conversation had gone: the idea had been interesting enough that Beyond hadn’t asked any inconvenient questions. Now to work out the other half of this idea... 

Glancing over his shoulder at the shinigami hovering there, Light asked, “Ryuk, how quickly do you pick up languages?”

“That’s our ride,” Leon said quietly, pointing to a car that was pulling up the road. The three of them started walking (and flying) towards it as Leon lifted his free hand to wave the driver down.

“Eh,” Ryuk sounded embarrassed, “not as quick as some others in the realm, if I’m honest… Um, maybe a few hours? A day at most. Guess it depends on what it is.”

_ A few hours is slow? Maybe shinigami are naturally talented with languages. I suppose it would make sense, if names have to be written in the death note in their native script. _ “That’ll be just fine,” Light murmured just before he opened the door to the back seat, climbing in after Leon. “Thank you.”

* * *

The next day, Light was leaving his cognitive psychology lecture and perambulating along an elevated walkway past smooth stone columns. A stack of loose papers was pressed into his arms. He looked over his shoulder, but only got a quick glimpse of long walnut curls before the man to whom they belonged disappeared into the crowd.

Hanging a right to descend a staircase and holding the papers in one hand as the other skimmed down the railing, Light read over what he’d been given. In monospace text that was too dark in some places and too light in others - like it had been written slapdash on a typewriter - the cover page said:

“Solresol v.2.0   
grammar / dictionary   
insp. credit to Light Yagami   
everything else by Beyond Birthday”

True to form, the next few pages contained a perfunctory explanation of the alphabet used to write the language down, then tables full of grammar and vocabulary. Most of the text was written by the same typewriter as the front cover, but various notes were penned down in felt-tip.

Light nodded to himself as he rounded a circular fountain and continued across the quad, flipping through the remaining pages. Slowly, pausing numerous times to search for words, he whistled a few simple sentences. He found they sounded like pleasant nonsense, the sort of thing one might expect of tuneless humming. 

“Heh, doing well, how ‘bout you?” Ryuk responded when Light whistled ‘how are you’. Apparently he’d been looking over Light’s shoulder, which wasn’t surprising.

Light didn’t need to look it up to remember the word for ‘good’, and fortunately, Ryuk recognized it too. 

Accompanied again by the shifting of papers, Light whistled, ‘What do you think of my solution?’

“Well, I like it. Feels sort of sneaky, like we’re secret agents or something. But why’d’ya bother? It’s not  _ that _ weird for humans to talk to themselves, especially with all that technology you’ve got floating around now.”

It  _ was _ definitely true that things like Bluetooth earpieces existed, and with any ordinary conversation topic, that would probably be what people would think, if they overheard Light talking to himself. But… ‘Talk about magic books and death gods is not normal.’ 

Still walking, Light pulled out his phone and started to snap pictures of the paper-stack, texting them all (in order) to Leon. They were about equally quick with languages, and they could both probably pick it up to conversational fluency within a couple of days.

And of course, Leon didn’t need any context. His next message read, “Received, thank you. Getting started on learning it now.”

At nearly the same time, though, he got a less expected text - from Beyond. He tapped the notification without reading it, opening his messages… and stalled. The text read:

“hey, this is gonna sound weird, but I noticed something odd about you when I saw you today”

Light furrowed his brows, typing out a reply despite his confusion. “Odd how?”

“can’t tell you or you’ll think I’m crazy   
more than you probably already do anyway   
just   
has anything… WEIRD happened to you lately?”

As a matter of fact,  _ yes, _ an awful lot of weird things had happened to Light of late, most of them centered around a supernatural notebook. But there was no way in hell that Beyond could  _ possibly _ know about that. All he’d done is look at his face...

Beyond kept texting, sending messages in rapid-fire. “the grapevine says you and your bf have been spending a lot of time in the chem lab late at night   
I wouldn’t think a criminal justice major like you would have any reason to be there    
and your bf doesn’t even go here”

Light fired off his usual reply to people asking why he was doing strange things unrelated to his major. “You know I’m planning to become a detective, Beyond. I’ll need to be good with things like chemistry. It’s the same reason I used to spend a lot of time on the school’s supercomputer.”  _ The only reason I don’t do that still is because Leon and I have our own now. Come to think, maybe we should have our own chemistry lab. That would mean less space in our office building to rent out, but that’s not too big an income stream for us, anyway. _ Despite these casual thoughts and his unperturbed outward appearance, in the back of his mind Light felt uneasy about all this. It seemed Beyond was talking about something more unusual than late-night chemistry experiments.

“I know, I know, but   
oh fuck it you’ll think I’m insane no matter what.   
Light, tell me”

The typing bubble came up, then disappeared, several times in quick succession. Light had stopped walking, just staring at his screen. The weight of nausea built in his gut even as he kept his face carefully neutral.

“have you figured out some way of making yourself immortal?”

The anxiety was abruptly replaced with a dizzying confusion. Light blinked at his phone, half-expecting the message to change into something that made more sense. After a long seconds, his fingers reached up to the keyboard, planning to type something like  _ of course not, how on earth did you possibly come to a conclusion like that? _

Ryuk coughed from behind him.

The sinking, anxious dread came back with full force. Whispering so quietly it was barely audible: “Ryuk… is that…”  _ Is that true? But you told me before that I won’t get the years I stole from those criminals! _

“You aren’t immortal,” the shinigami said. “But you’re not the regular kind of mortal anymore, either. This is, uh… gonna take more than five seconds to explain.”

Dazed, Light looked around; he was close to the edge of campus, but students were milling about in earshot. He took a sharp right, walking towards a nearby park that would probably be empty enough at this hour of the evening.

As he walked, he texted Beyond back: “Not sure how you came to that conclusion, but no. If I ever do find the cure for mortality I’ll give you a holler, ok?”

Beyond wasn’t replying right away, so Light screenshotted his strange text conversation and sent the pictures to Leon. As soon as he’d finished sending them, he added onto the end: “Our new friend has something to say about this. I’ll call you in a minute.”

Just after he sent that, Light finally got a reply from Beyond, only a single letter, impassive and unreadable: “k.”

* * *

_ Five years ago: August 3, 2014. _

“We ought to have a secret code.”

Light looked up from the book he’d been reading -  _ Influence: Science and Practice _ by Robert Cialdini - and propped his cheek on his palm. He was still laying on his stomach on their white-and-grey checkered picnic blanket, but his feet paused in their idle kicking at the air as he let out an inquisitive, “Hm?”

Leon was sitting cross-legged with his own book open across his lap; he removed his thumb from between his lips and was staring up at the swaying oak trees that framed the empty park and the cloudless summer sky. “Texting only works when we aren’t in the same room, and your family seems determined to have me over for dinner at least once a week.”

“I like having you over,” Light commented; his voice was nonchalant because the statement was so obvious.

“And I like  _ being _ over,” Leon smiled, propping his hands on the blanket behind him and leaning back to rest on them. “But wouldn’t it be preferable if it didn’t interfere with our work?”

Light nodded, setting his bookmark into the book’s spine in case a gust of wind came along to flip its pages. He pushed himself up just enough to move closer to Leon, then turned over, so his head was resting in his best friend’s lap. “What kind of code?”

“It shouldn’t look to anyone else like we’re doing anything unusual,” Leon mused as his fingers traced along the thin leather straps of Light’s suspenders. “Writing on each others’ skin would be too ostentatious, but something similar…”

Light thought for a moment. “Do you know Morse code?” he asked. “It might take some practice for us to become fast enough for it to be practical, but that’s a definite option.”

Against Light’s chest, Leon’s thin fingers tapped out, ‘I do know it.’

“And you’re better at it than me, huh,” Light grinned. “I’ll practice more on generating, instead of just recognizing. But is that a satisfactory secret code for us, Leon?”

“I would say it is, Light,” he said aloud. “Thank you for a brilliant idea.”

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on Tumblr: @booklovertwilight
> 
> This work doesn't have a regular upload schedule (yet) - I'm spending most of my time right now on [(Letting Go Of) What I've Done](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27034804), which updates weekly. If you'd like to be notified when I post new chapters of this fic, please hit the subscribe button at the top!


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